28
PRINT.IT
01732 759725
INTERVIEW
Comparing it to a lottery win
might be an overstatement, but
Foxconn’s $3.5 billion take-over
of Sharp Corporation has clearly
given Sharp Business Systems UK
a shot in the arm. After months
of penny-pinching and deferred
initiatives, the company is looking
forward to exploiting the financial
muscle of the Taiwanese contract
manufacturer to strengthen
its product offering and drive
significant growth in the UK.
When
PrintIT
sister publication
PrintIT Reseller
caught up with
Stuart Sykes, managing director
of Sharp Business Systems UK, at
the company’s offices in Stockley
Park near Heathrow, he described
Foxconn as ‘the biggest business
you’ve never heard of’, pointing
out that it is the third largest IT
company by revenue (according
to Forbes) and that in some way
it touches 40% of all consumer
products worldwide.
This, he says, gives Sharp real
strength in depth, adding that the
benefits of the relationship flow
in both directions, with Foxconn
gaining an important new route to
market.
“Sharp gives Foxconn added
market potential. With Foxconn’s
support, we want Document
Solutions to sell more; both
companies share the same
ambition for Sharp to grow
aggressively in the next 3-5 years.
That’s very exciting,” he said.
“One of the concepts we
can now look at is ‘the smart
office’, what we call ‘connected
technologies’. We want to be the
one-stop customers go to when
they have to kit out an office or
school. Sharp could do the network
cabling and infrastructure; the IT
equipment – servers and laptops;
the MFPs and displays; the
furniture of the future, which will
have technology built in; and even
the telephony. Because Foxconn is
helping us put that wider portfolio
in place, all the pieces will integrate
and talk to each other. That idea of
the smart office is something we
want to pursue.”
Sykes points out that in the
short-term Sharp is already
benefiting from the relationship.
“Foxconn has invested a lot of
money in some new A4 products,
which has always been one of the
weaker parts of Sharp’s offering.
That’s underway now and we will
see new products coming to us
within the next 12 months. We also
have a new Visual Solutions range
that we will be launching at ISE
in February. This will broaden our
reach with different functionalities,
different price points and some
products that are slightly different
to anything else on the market.
That’s a real benefit – being able to
fill the gaps in our offering.”
Smart office
Before Foxconn’s investment Sharp
was already diversifying beyond
MFPs to offer customers a variety
of complementary document-
centric products and services,
including large format displays
and interactive whiteboards,
‘cloud portal office’ document
management and collaboration
solutions and, most recently, IT
services that enable SMEs to
outsource essential functions, such
as help desk, backup, disaster
recovery and hardware break-fix.
As well as enabling customers
to reduce the number of suppliers
they deal with, Sharp’s broader
offering provides reassurance
that different solutions will work
together and gives businesses the
convenience of one number to call
should there be a problem.
MFPs still make up more than
90% of Sharp Document Solutions
sales but this is likely to change
in the future as sales of software,
services and other hardware
devices increase.
Sykes points out that as Sharp
seeks to diversify into other
areas, having both a direct sales
force and a network of 120 Sharp
dealers is a big asset, because it
allows the company to fine-tune its
offering on the direct side and then
deliver market-proven solutions to
its dealers, wrapped up in a way
that makes them easy to sell and
deliver to end users.
“The template we have followed
with our visual solutions, which
we are going to replicate with
IT Services, is to launch to the
direct team first, take it to the
In a recent interview with sister publication
PrintIT Reseller
, Stuart
Sykes, Managing Director of Sharp Business Systems UK, outlined how
Foxconn’s take-over of Sharp Corporation is helping the company realise
its ‘connected technologies’ vision
Sharp unbound
One of the
concepts we
can now look
at is ‘the
smart office’,
what we call
‘connected
technologies’
Stuart Sykes,
Managing Director,
Sharp Business
Systems UK
